We all know that Carrie Prejean was involved in making a sex tape that proved the undoing of her legal battle with the Miss California USA Pageant. What we don't know is what implications that this may hold for the former Miss California USA, her ex boyfriend, the pageant and anyone else who distributed or showed the video. There may be something more than just a simple violation of privacy. The tape could actually be criminal.

Since Carrie Prejean was only 17 years old during the filming of this video, it could strictly be understood as child pornography. This likely explains why the Prejean sex tape itself has not been more widely disseminated on the internet, as websites could take on huge liability forp putting up child pornography.

Prejean shot the video by herself and then she sent it to her boyfriend at the time.  

According to the Sentencing Law and Policy blog, the video that Carrie Prejean shot could be viewed as "use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct" which is against federal law. Anyone who produces material that uses the sexual exploitation of minors violates strict child pornography law. Specifically, this law falls under 18 USC 2251. Anyone guilty of this crime is subject to a 15 year mandatory minimum sentence.

In yet another instance of digital drama, we have a lawsuit based on things posted on the internet, pitting school discipline against students' rights of expresion.

Wired Magazine reports that two teenage girls from Indiana have sued their school district after they were punished for posting provocative photos of themselves on their MySpace pages. The girls claim that the district violated their First Amendment rights and should not have punished them for activities done outside of school.

You can check out the news report here:

The former Miss California USA may have to repay $5,200 that she borrowed for her breast implants.

State pageant officials for the state of California say that they loaned the money to Ms. Prejean for the medical procedure in order to be more competitive for the Miss USA pageant.

The repayment demand came in response to a lawsuit filed by Ms. Prejean where she claims that pageant officials violated her  medical privacy by leaking to reporters that her breasts were augmented and that they paid for it.

The former Hole lead singer and infamous widow of Kurt Cobain is digging herself deeper in that legal hole we wrote about. Courtney Love has been denied protection with California's Anti-SLAPP law by Judge Aurelio Munoz in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The denial stems from a lawsuit for libel via the social networking tool Twitter. The Los Angeles clothing designer Dawn Simorangkir brought a suit for libel when Ms. Love tweeted about the designer calling her a thief, drug dealer, and an unfit mother.

With social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and gossip sites like Campus Gossip, it is getting easier and easier to ruin a regular person's reputation with just a few keystrokes. While cyber bullying seems pretty harmless to most people, it is actually a serious legal problem.

When you post something online about another person that can ruin his/her reputation, you run the risk of being held liable for digital defamation or libel.

With barely a pause for breath after the Liskula Cohen-Rosemary Port dustup, Google was once again in court recently being asked to unmask one of its users. And once again, it appears that an anonymous group of users may find itself exposed and sued for libel. The stakes this time are higher, though, implicating questions of free speech and political dissent in the British territory of Turks and Caicos.

The background: the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) are a British overseas territory, not far from the Bahamas, where, on August 14, the British government suspended local rule, imposing direct rule by an appointed governor, after revelations of massive corruption. One of the sources reporting on the allegations of bribery was the TCI Journal, which obtained and published an unredacted version of a U.K. government report detailing allegations of bribery. Many Journal contributors operate anonymously.

Former Miss California Carrie Prejean has filed a lawsuit against the operators and producers of the Miss California USA pageant, claiming religious discrimination and defamation.

Prejean, the runner-up in this year's Miss USA pageant after famously declaring her opposition to gay marriage in response to an onstage question, was fired from her job as the reigning Miss California in June, allegedly because she missed out on several required appearances.


But according to FOX news, the suit filed this week by Carrie Prejean's attorney Charles LiMandri  claims that Prejean made all the appearances that were required of her, and that she was in fact fired because of her gay-marriage response, which she characterizes as a statement of her religious belief. Discrimination in employment on the basis of religious belief is, of course, illegal.

For good measure, the suit alleges that the defendants -- pageant co-directors Shanna Moakler and Keith Lewis, and publicist Roger Neal -- engaged in a conspiracy to defame and ultimately fire her after she repeated her anti-gay-marriage stance on the Today show. That conspiracy allegedly involved the assistance of online gossip columnist and Miss USA judge Perez Hilton.

Should we start feeling bad for Google? The search giant (and blog-hosting service) has found itself caught in the middle of a nasty fight this week between an anonymous blogger and the woman who wanted to sue that blogger for defaming her.

First, model Liskula Cohen won a court order requiring Google to turn over information identifying an anonymous blogger, who Cohen alleged had defamed her using Google's Blogger service. The unmasked blogger, Rosemary Port, immediately found herself an unwilling center of of attention; the confluence of (semi-) celebrity, juicy gossip, and crumbling internet anonymity, with Google in the middle of it all, made the story irresistible to just about everyone.

Cohen dropped her defamation suit immediately after learning Port's name; but Rosemary Port reacted by promising to sue Google for revealing her identity.

Model Liskula Cohen was victorious this week in her efforts to get Google to turn over the IP address and email address of an anonymous blogger who allegedly defamed her. She celebrated, according to the New York Post, by forgiving her attacker (one Rosemary Port, who was apparently retaliating against Cohen for some nasty things Cohen allegedly told Port's boyfriend), and dropping a $3 million lawsuit against her.

Perhaps Liskula Cohen was feeling generous, but do the rest of us have to worry about the "anonymous" things we post on the internet? Are you on the verge of being outed, and sued, by the next person who doesn't like what you have to say?

Probably not, as long as you don't run into anyone with really deep pockets and nothing better to do than sue you, and as long as you stick to expressing opinions.

Microblogging site Twitter appears to have reached a cultural-awareness milestone: people are now suing each other over comments posted there. Today the story of the big, bad landlord and the put-upon tenant has shifted once again, as the landlord tries to shift blame to its allegedly litigious tenant.

The story so far: back in May, Twitter user and then-Horizon Realty tenant Amanda Bonnen complained via tweet that her landlord was apparently allowing her to live in mold-infested filth: "Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's okay." The response this month from Horizon: lawsuit! A short complaint filed in Cook County court last week accused Bonnen of libeling Horizon in 140 characters or less, and sought $50,000 in damages.

Reaction on Twitter and in the blogosphere was predictably incredulous. Not only did this sound like a severe overreaction to a minor complaint made to about 20 Twitter followers; Horizon's own spokesman fanned the flames with an instant-classic quote, declaring his family's company a "sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization," according to the Chicago Sun-Times.